Ch 16

16: Special Instruction

Ashtavakra said: 

You can recite and discuss scripture 

all you want, 

but until you drop everything 

you will never know Truth. 

You can enjoy and work and meditate, 

but you will still yearn for That 

which is beyond all experience, 

and in which all desires are extinguished. 

Everyone is miserable 

because they exert constant effort. 

But no one understands this. 

A ripe mind can become unshackled 

upon hearing this one instruction. 

The master idler, 

to whom even blinking is a bother, 

is happy. 

But he is the only one. 

When the mind is free of opposites 

like This is done, and This is yet undone, 

one becomes indifferent to 

merit, wealth, pleasure and liberation. 

One who abhors sense objects avoids them. 

One who desires them becomes ensnared. 

One who neither abhors nor desires 

is neither detached nor attached. 

As long as there is desire-which 

is the absence of discrimination-there 

will be attachment and non-attachment. 

This is the cause of the world. 

Indulgence creates attachment. 

Aversion creates abstinence. 

Like a child, the sage is free of both 

and thus lives on as a child. 

One who is attached to the world 

thinks renouncing it will relieve his misery. 

One who is attached to nothing is free 

and does not feel miserable 

even in the world. 

He who claims liberation as his own, 

as an attainment of a person, 

is neither enlightened nor a seeker. 

He suffers his own misery. 

Though Hara, Hari 

or the lotus-born Brahma himself 

instruct you, 

until you know nothing 

you will never know Self.